A few months back, we were talking with the kids about our family in Canada and they told us that they missed their cousins as they hadn't seen them in over a year and a half. DW and I talked this over and we thought it would be fun to do a cross country road trip. So we starting planning a 2 week extravaganza where we would see some of our country's National Parks, spend a week with family, and cover nearly 4500 miles in the process.

The Route:

So as we sat down with our handy dandy road atlas, Google maps, and AAA TripTik tools, we started to draw out the routes we could take between Arlington Heights and Edmonton. As we looked at the maps, our plan was to try to find interesting stopping points along the way, as well as keeping the driving manageable for each day. After considering a number of different routes, we decided on including the following sites:

Thanks for joining. I must admit that we did not get to enjoy a stop at Swiss Chalet / Harvey's this trip scared1: I know, its a travesty missing out on Harvey's Poutine, in fact it one of my few regrets from this trip)

Hi everyone, I thought it would be appropriate to first of all apologize for not getting the next update posted here yet, but I still have not downloaded all of our pictures and I would like to have a few for our next installment.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know that today we had a family detour to go and pick up our newest family member....

So, where were we... oh yeah we just did the introductions. I wish the guy writing this trip report was a little more timely... oh wait, that's me... This TR is AWESOME.

So Saturday morning rolls around and we wake up bright and early to pack up the van. We get everything all situated and roll out to.... SOFTBALL.

{side note}
When we first planned our trip we tried to account for all events / team sports so we pulled out the schedules from last year, analyzed, reviewed and decided we should be fine booking the last week of June / first week of July for vacation. So with time booked at work and my primary backup person already booked out the second week of July, we get the softball schedule and see that the last game is JUNE 30th???...what the.... oh well. So we had originally planned to head out first thing Saturday morning but the girls had a softball game at 10:30. So we re-tooled the schedule and decided we would leave after softball.
{end side note}

So we headed off to the girls last softball game of the season with the van packed about 90%. We figured that it would be good to swing by home before hitting the road for last minute items / potty breaks.

So about 1:00 PM we head out on I-90 going west. The plan was to drive to Sioux Falls the first day without any sightseeing stops. This was fairly easily obtained as we were driving through Wisconsin and Minnesota. So we drove without much ado for the majority of the afternoon /evening. The few notable events of this part of the drive were as follows:

- The first "are we there yet" didn't happen until a little after 5pm from Shannon. (she won the prize for being the most impatient).

- When we crossed the Mississippi River Megan renamed it the "Sippy" River. Of course every river we crossed after that was also called the "Sippy" River.

So without further ado we pulled into Sioux Falls around 9:30 pm. We had a reservation at the Springhill Suites. As it turned out we were not able to book the same sub-chain hotel for the 6 nights that we stayed in hotels so I'll be adding comments about each hotel.

We were very happy with the room at Springhill Suites and this was one of our top 2 hotels for the trip. The hotel seemed relatively new (or at least recently renovated). We had booked a room with 2 queen beds and a pull out sofa. This worked out very well for our family and the room was very spacious. Overall I would give Springhill Suites an A based on this experience.

So there we have it, we've made it to South Dakota and are ready to begin the sightseeing part of our adventure.

{side note}
When we first planned our trip we tried to account for all events / team sports so we pulled out the schedules from last year, analyzed, reviewed and decided we should be fine booking the last week of June / first week of July for vacation. So with time booked at work and my primary backup person already booked out the second week of July, we get the softball schedule and see that the last game is JUNE 30th???...what the.... oh well. So we had originally planned to head out first thing Saturday morning but the girls had a softball game at 10:30. So we re-tooled the schedule and decided we would leave after softball.
{end side note}

Click to expand...

What would be the point in even having plans if you didn't have to change them?

So about 1:00 PM we head out on I-90 going west. The plan was to drive to Sioux Falls the first day without any sightseeing stops. This was fairly easily obtained as we were driving through Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Click to expand...

Silly Flatlander, there's tons of stuff to do along I-90

State Street in Madison. It was the middle of the day in the middle of the summer, so the drunken debauchery would probably be at level acceptable to take a family with young kids. Probably.

You and Mark might have to let the whole nemesis thing slide... at least temporarily. Between this and the shirt Barry wore to meet Mark, it looks like he's trying to make this nemesis pairing a trio.

Click to expand...

Oh no, we can't quite go there. See, Barry and I have this Illinois / Wisconsin love / hate thing going on, but I could never become his nemesis as he's a Cubs fan. So you see the conundrum there.

Now, Mark on the other hand.... he and I have this deep rooted hate that goes all the way back to 2010 where his "Blares Horn" went up against my badaba badaba badaba badaba, and we won the cup!

So, even though Barry and I don't always see eye to eye on most topics (outside of Disney and Dole Whips) any animosity that he directs to Mark is more than welcome. Something like the enemy of my enemy's enemy doesn't really bother me.